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NPR ran a story recently, on a piece of music they referred to as "The Riff." You know it. Dee dee dee dee doot doo doot doot doo. The "Asian" music. That story was on my mind when I started reading this week's reviews, featuring a lot of food from various Asian cuisines, decoding those cultural references, and borrowing from them (and others). This is, how you say, Flyover Friday.

A beef fat candle dripping onto bread, are you fucking kidding me? This menu – this experience – sounds pretty amazing. An unusual subject for a review out of a city that doesn’t start with New or Los or isn’t Chicago or Boston, but worth it for how ambitious the service is.

I’m not really sure how it is that I haven’t heard of this Bait Shop before. 120 taps is no joke man. Though I don’t think “bright tasting foam pilsner” is a BJCP style description, it’s a pretty good review from Acevedo.

Abraham’s reviews are brief and, as I’ve pointed out many times, filled with design and architectural notes. So it’s probably fine that little time is spent on food detail, since a critic really needs to dive all the way in to do an Indian review justice, or else gloss over breezily. Abraham excels at the latter.

If the restaurant was a mess, as the critic(s) describe – and it sure sounds like it was – so is the review, a mish-mash of amateur dining-companion commentary, bulleted list, and apparently-absent editorial input.

Ooft. I’m not gonna lie, I get a gross, vaguely racist vibe off of the name, which I get might be a pun on Madison as a U-niversity town, but plays like a reference to stereotypical Chinese-accented Pidgin English. It’s not disappointing to me that there appears to be no good reason to patronize the place.

I LOVE BARBECUE AND I LOVE READING ABOUT IT. I only hate it because I have to wait until next summer before I might be in St. Louis again. Froeb knows what’s up with ‘cue, and it’s an appetizing joy to read. Some inside-baseball sassiness in the comments section.

“Civilized” is such a crappy adjective. It can hardly praise something without diminishing something else. I’m also not really sure what Segal’s getting at with her closing grafs. A bit congratulatory.

That’s certainly a bummer of a review, of a restaurant that should, by its business heritage, be a lot better. But boy does an Edison-bulbed restaurant in a former Borders sound really, really gentrified.